The Trinbago Knight Riders suffered their first loss of the 2017 Hero CPL on Wednesday night, when they went under to the Jamaica Tallawahs by four wickets at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. The Knights were on top for a quarter of the match and lost their way in front of a good crowd on hand.

With over 12,000 fans decked in red making themselves heard, the Knight Riders did not disappoint for the first eight overs. They reached the dizzy heights of 100 for two. However, Kesrick Williams used his medium pace bowling to good effect, to shock the locals from a position of strength to one of despair. On an Oval pitch that was offering good pace and bounce, the ball came on nicely for the batsmen and Knight Riders ran away, racing to the century of just eight overs.

Brendan McCullum (16), Sunil Narine (23), Colin Munroe (41) and Darren Bravo (33), were all brutal but never looked as if they wanted to go to the end with a big one. Williams ended with three wickets and Odean Smith another three to stifle the free flowing batsmen, which led to injudicious strokes and their eventual downfall.

The Tallawahs—like the Knight Riders before them—made an excellent start to their innings, finding the new ball easier to hit. Lendl Simmons and Kumar Sangakkara’s 61-run opening partnership came in just 5.3 overs.

When Simmons and then Andre McCarthy were dismissed in quick succession the match threatened to take another turn as Knight Riders spin-twins, Narine and Shadab Khan, were deployed in the middle overs. However, after Sangakkara was dismissed off a no ball against Narine he put on 59 for the next two wickets with Rovman Powell and Shakib Al Hasan to keep the Tallawahs in control.

The increasingly softer ball meant that boundaries were hard to come by and even with a run-a-ball needed it seemed that a series of dots could turn the match. When Sangakkara was caught at long off with the Tallawahs still 25 shy of the target the Knight Riders, buoyed by vocal home support, seemed to believe that they could still win.

While boundaries were indeed harder to come by they were not impossible to find and when Jonathan Foo inside edged a four and then slammed a six over long-on that was parried over the rope by Shadab Khan the Tallawahs finally got home. Despite the loss the TKR still leads the standings in net run rate, and will look to get back on track when they battle the Guyana Amazon Warriors at the Oval from 9pm tonight. There are likely to be changes to be made by the home side for that clash, and those changes may have nothing to do with the fact that they lost their last game yesterday to the Tallawahs but more to do with the 9pm start.

Coach of the team Simon Katich said that the dew did play a factor in the loss to Tallawahs because the spinners could not grip the ball well. When asked about changes he hinted by saying, “It’s a quick turnaround between the matches but when we sit down to decide on the team the discussion about the dew and the personnel we used must come on for discussion.” Therefore the Knight Riders may opt to go with that extra seamer instead of spinner Khary Pierre.

The TKR coach added that the loss in the last game had to do with batsmen not taking time to adjust, he said “When the ball gets softer it is harder to score and this is when the batsmen have to apply themselves differently. Hopefully the guys would have learnt a lot from the last game and will take that into this one,” Katich concluded.

Meanwhile, Guyana captain Martin Guptill wants his team to get their first win of the campaign, as the Guyanese franchise have lost both matches to date, “We just want to go out there and start winning matches. The guys know what they have to do and they have been preparing well.

“We always have tough matches against Trinbago and we are looking to go out there and defeat them at home.”